Geotab, one of the biggest telematics providers in the world, said increasingly fleets are keen on developing a so-called Green Fleet dashboard.
“It’s rather important when you look at the fact that 16 percent of greenhouse emissions basically come from the transport industry,” said Ben Hale, Geotab Australia’s EV, IoT and satellite solutions engineer, in a presentation at the Australasian Fleet Management association in Sydney earlier this year. “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
In a world where climate change is no longer a debate, it’s not good enough to calculate fleet emissions based on fuel used.
“In a dynamic world where fleet sizes are changing, and growing, and the makeup of the fleet changes, you need to really look at yourself compared to industry standards,” said Hale.
That’s where Geotab is well established to help with some 3.5 million vehicles on its systems it can provide data on various industries and fleets to help make like for like comparisons.
Hale said while larger organisations are increasingly introducing chief sustainability officers, in smaller organisations the job of promoting sustainability may fall to the fleet manager.
Hale said prioritising environment and sustainability goals leads to using your fuel efficient vehicles in more efficient ways, including efficient driving practices, looking at things such as minimising idling and the time on the road and optimising the routes of vehicles.
To be sure, if pressure to go green isn’t coming from the top of the organisation, it will come from the bottom as employees ask questions, or from the outside as customers demand companies do the right thing.
To face the pressure it means having evidence of efforts already made and progress towards targets to compare your fleet or organisation with others in the same industry at least.
“Whether you’re going to be chosen as the logistics provider of choice for a large supermarket chain, a delivery service, or you’re going to lease your vehicles to the next big rideshare organisation,” said Hale, you’re going to need a green fleet dashboard to measure and report on green fleet solutions and objectives.
Hale also said it was important to have aspirational goals and to get staff excited about what the organisation was doing to encourage them to want to collect data and take measurements and continue to implement the management program.
“Going green is not something that you just do once and forget. And the way technology changes these days, it’s never gonna be set and forget, it’s always kind of be a case of transitioning,” said Hale.
